


It's Full of Stars

by Nautilusopus



Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2019 [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alien Abduction, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Human Experimentation, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 18:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: One year to the day of Cloud's disappearance, he returns.At least, they're pretty sure it's him.(Written for FFVII Halloween Week: Day 2 - Monsters and Movies)





	It's Full of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> My least favourite of all of these for a multitude of reasons, especially since I was looking forward to this one. Buh. I have no goddamn idea what I'm doing but I promise they'll get better from here.

It's been exactly one year since Cloud went missing, and then he just turns up a mile outside Edge without so much as a how-do-you-do, stark naked.

It's difficult to get a story out of him at first -- by all accounts he's a gibbering wreck. He doesn't respond to speech and won't say a word himself, flinches away from touch, doesn't seem to be looking at anything, his eyes unfocused, huddled in a state of shock. At first, they wonder if perhaps he's had a relapse of some sort thanks to Jenova, or maybe residual mako poisoning, and wandered off in a fugue state or something; but then things don't quite add up the more they look.

He's in far too good condition to have spent all that time scavenging in the wilderness: he's clean and well-groomed, his hair is combed, if not a bit longer, he's in good enough shape to have been clearly eating regularly. And from what Tifa can tell he doesn't seem to have sustained so much as a scratch the entire time -- even the calluses on his hands, a worker's hands well-earned from hours of repair work and combat and fiddling with engines, are gone. Which meant he'd have to have had the breakdown somewhat recently -- but if that was the case, why didn't he call the entire time? Why had not one witness seen him? What had he been doing out there that somehow hadn't required him to use his hands even once? And what had managed to reduce him to this state in what must have been the past week, at most?

He'd left his sword and bike behind, as well -- which, he could've easily forgotten to bring them with him, if he'd gone nuts and run off, but it wouldn't explain how quickly he'd managed to disappear all those months ago. And it had been quickly -- a matter of Tifa waking up in the middle of the night and finding the bed a lot colder than it had been a few hours prior.

There's also the thing in his neck.

They mistake it for some wrapper stuck to him, at first -- a silvery circle at the base of his skull, seemingly fused to his skin so smoothly as though it had grown there. Cold blue lights dance across its surface -- one that faintly flickers within it, in time with his pulse, and a bright ring set at just before the edge of the thing, glowing nonstop like the face of an LED clock. It doesn't seem to come off, and Cloud screams in terror when they touch it, tries to push them away.

There's something not right about his grip, either. Like he's sick, or something, despite looking quite the contrary. And there's the way Nanaki won't stop growling at him.

"That's not Cloud," he states adamantly, and Tifa finds herself a little shaken at the contempt in his voice. "It's not. It doesn't smell like him."

He remains blank as he's taken in to see doctor after doctor (and Tifa can't help but think in the back of her mind that this _probably_ isn't exactly helping to calm him down), and they find out two more things that raise a million more questions that they can only dread the answers to:

One, the silver disc thing isn't just something adhered to the surface-- beneath the skin it's fused to his brain stem by little tendrils, like mould on old cheese, winding their way up into the rest of his brain as well, but there isn't even a scab, much less the expected scarring, left over from the surgery. They don't know what it is, besides non-organic and obviously-not-supposed-to-be-there. Even after they start bringing in experts, they _still_ don't know what it is. They've probably scanned it a hundred times and would probably scan it more if Tifa hadn't put her foot down and cut off access to them.

Two, Cloud is human now. Completely.

Hojo had spent years splicing his genes with Jenova and who even knew what else, and it's all gone now -- which shouldn't even be possible. It's DNA, it doesn't "grow back" despite all signs to the contrary that it appears to have done so anyway. Even if they found a way to purge Jenova from his body, it's part of him -- _was_ anyway -- and he'd die along with it. But it's just _gone_ now. They draw almost as much blood from him as they run scans on the disc in his neck, double and triple and quadruple-checking, and the results are the same every time. He's been "cured" somehow.

Thus, their only recourse is getting answers out of Cloud somehow. And Cloud won't speak -- doesn't even seem to recognise anyone. Even Reeve pulling all the strings in the world isn't enough to keep him out of the psych ward, but at least it's quieter there, and it keeps Tifa from running herself ragged taking care of him full time again. It also helps that he can actually use the bathroom and bathe and eat on his own, though most of the challenge now comes in the form of convincing him to eat in the first place. At least he's mostly stopped flinching at everything after a little while.

She winds up running herself ragged anyway. They all do. They'd thought he was _dead_. They'd left his sword by Zack's in the church with Aeris's flowers in memoriam at month eight. Every single day she expects to wake up and find him gone again, as though it were all a dream, and goes out of her way not to let him out of her sight for even a second. Given the fact that Yuffie's practically moved in with her she knows she's hardly the only one that feels the same way, and in the end it's Vincent that volunteers to keep watch "just in case" since he doesn't need to sleep much. The man doesn't have nearly as good of a poker face as he thinks he does.

Cloud seems to have trouble adjusting to the lack of Jenova in his system as well. True, there's still the mako present as evidenced by the glow in his eyes, but without his cells reflexively feeding off its presence, binding it to his tissues, his body has started to pass it out of his system. He no longer has the same eerie, inhuman grace to his movement, which Tifa can't exactly say she's ungrateful for. At times he seems to panic, slamming his palms against his ears as though he's going deaf -- which, as far as he appears to be concerned, he is.

Cloud still doesn't seem to recognise them, either. Or -- he does, but he regards them with a fearful wariness in his eyes that's awful to see. And he's so, so quiet -- won't even give them nonverbal cues beyond stolen glances when he thinks no one's looking.

Speech is slow to return. A month later, and they can sometimes get him to respond to one-word commands with a nod or a shake, as long as they're patient about it and he's calm enough. It's at least reassuring in the most miniscule way that he's aware of what's going on around him, on some level.

But no matter how gentle they are, he still shakes when they enter the room, and there's never even a hint of recognition in his eyes.

* * *

They are kind to him, the others. They always are. Until they aren't. He learned that the hard way a long, long time ago.

They smile and offer gentle touch and soothing conversation (are they using real words? He doesn't know anymore -- his brain always hears whatever it wants to hear anyway, and all of it is mush now). They bring him warm food and show him the sun (not the real sun, _not the real sun_ \-- he saw once when he'd tried to escape, only to be greeted with an endless void filled with white pinpricks and the realisation that there was nowhere to escape to). They look, for all the world, like his loved ones had. Aeris and Zack and Ma once, too, though not as often, and not for quite a while since.

They look like this all the way up until the world falls apart around him, and he is lifted by something unseen and taken apart piece by piece.

It doesn't hurt. Nothing does. He wishes it _did_ in a way, something to cut through the nightmarish haze his life had taken on ever since he'd been woken up one night by the bright light outside his window. There's never any pain, though, no matter how extensively he's been taken apart and put back together, and the only discomfort he ever got to feel was him frantically digging at his skin, hoping to wake up.

He doesn't wake up. He never does. He doesn't know if he's still asleep (he has to be, right?) or awake, and this is what his life is -- what it always was, and -- he doesn't know anymore.

He doesn't know how many years its been. A long, long time, he knows. He used to mark a tally for every day, until one year stretched into ten, stretched into twenty, into a hundred... the same smiling faces greet him every day, planted there by -- by these _things_ to keep him calm. Compliant. He doesn't know why they bother when they can just immobilise him with the thing they put in his head. Sometimes he wakes up from sessions with entire periods, blank. In the end, counting the years means little. So does resisting, or engaging with what he knows are just more illusions.

Sometimes he wonders if Tifa was ever real. If any of them were.

He doesn't think so. They've done so much to him, the -- the gods. He doesn't feel like that's right, but what else could they possibly be, indifferent to his pleas as they are, omnipotent and omniscient, able to reach into places locked away in his head even he didn't know about and scrape Jenova away, leaving his thoughts empty and quiet, able to retrieve him from even his successful escape into death? He should have long since died of old age by now, as should have all of these people doting on him, bringing him food. Sometimes he's missing parts. Sometimes, there are parts there that shouldn't be. Always, they're gone just as quickly. One day he wakes up knowing nothing but his name and the events of the last three hours, the next recalling every second of his life in agonising detail -- even things he didn't think _anyone_ remembered, memories of his infancy long since buried. Is it so much of a stretch to think they just implanted his family, too? To get him to latch onto these smiling puppets they created, along with every other fake thing he's surrounded by.

That seems the most likely, after all. From what little he knew about his life (that he could reliably believe, which wasn't much anymore), it didn't really make sense for them to know one another. For the woman, Tifa, to pick _him _when she's beautiful and kind, and she could have had anyone she wanted, and the only thing he ever seemed to do for her was shake and cry, the way he's doing right now as she reaches for him, wondering if this time is just another pre-experiment calming. He doesn't understand why the larger man, Barret, would be staring at him with concerned eyes, shoving a plate of food towards him, when in the memories Cloud is always nothing but cruel to him and his child. He doesn't understand why the tall one, Vincent, would suddenly stay by his side night and day, watching the doors for him as though he wants to help keep _them_ out, when before he never even called, and Cloud could scarcely believe he didn't hate him altogether.

He wonders what the real sun is like. He can't remember; he isn't even sure he's ever felt it in his life.

The gods seem to know everything _he's_ thinking with the silver light they've put in his body, but they don't seem interested in informing him of anything they're thinking in turn. He doesn't understand why they do the things they do, and he knows he couldn't even begin to understand the answer he'd get. Sometimes he's wound apart piece by piece, others he sees through a thousand sets of eyes as a thousand different people, his mind, his memory, his own body shifted and changed from day to day.

Many times, there is a child there that looks eerily like him. It ages and dies, and he has no idea if this happens over eighty hours or eighty years. Time has no meaning anymore.

Once, they show him a circle of glass, and the noise it makes causes his ears to bleed. After, he's put into a quiet, dark space for a long, long while, while the thing in his neck keeps him from doing so much as twitching.

And once, he wakes up in the grass and is found by an illusion he's never seen before.

Soon enough, though, it doesn't matter. The others return, and he goes right back to being brought food, and smiled at, and he wonders to himself if he'd ever felt real love before either. It must be nice.

He supposes he’ll have to make do with what’s being offered now.

Lately, he's not even sure if _they_ realise what they are.


End file.
